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Microsoft has launched a web version of its Office suite in a bid to compete with Google, which is increasingly encroaching on the software giant's territory.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta will allow people to access their documents online and share their work with others, in a similar way to Google Apps, which allow users to create and store a number of different documents online.

The free service was announced as Microsoft also unveiled a number of new Office Live Workspace features, such as an activity panel, notifications, direct links and multifile upload.

"Today's announcement moves us further down the path of bringing a software plus services experience to people at home, work and school," said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft business division.

"By combining the rich client experience of Microsoft Office with flexible, intuitive service offerings, we're providing seamless computing experiences for our 500 million Office users worldwide."

Office Live Workspace lets people organise documents and projects online and work on them from almost any computer. People can save more than 1,000
Microsoft Office documents online and access them via the web.

The suite is only available in English, although Microsoft said it has plans to launch the product in other language. The final, public version of Office Live will be out later in the year, Microsoft said.